After resting for about two sticks of incense, Lin Chuan stood up.
"It's almost done. Let's clear the road first. Those two boulders are still blocking the canyon. We have to find a way to get through."
After discussing it, Qin Tiexin and Du Heng went in first this time. The two of them found a handy weapon from the pile of Law Artifact's remains, Qin Tiexin found a half-broken giant axe, and Du Heng found a broadsword with its handle cut off.
The two came to the boulder, raised their weapons and chopped down on the boulder.
On the one hand, it's not that I don't feel sorry for my own weapon. On the other hand, this piece of Shitou is not made of any special material. It is just two ordinary rocks. Under the power of Qin Tiexin and Du Heng, it was quickly split into pieces of gravel.
In less than half an hour, the canyon passage was cleared into a narrow path that could accommodate two people.
It was still Qin Tiexin who took the lead, and Du Heng stayed in the valley to prepare for the response.
He held the Zen staff and walked at the front, successfully passed through the last section of the Jue Ling area, and took the exit at the other end of the canyon.
A warm wave of Spiritual Qi rushed towards him, and the white gold bead in Dantian turned slightly. Qin Tiexin took a deep breath and felt the touch of spiritual power flowing through the meridians again. The dry and thin texture of the unique spirit in the air gradually faded away, and was replaced by moist air with a faint scent of vegetation.
He turned back and hit the rope three times into the canyon.
After a while, Du Heng was the second to follow, then Xu Ying, Liu Suifeng, and Lin Chuan followed. The five people passed through the canyon one after another, and the gravel under their feet gradually turned into finer dark red gravel.
About two miles out of the canyon, Liu Suifeng raised the formation disk and took a look. "Spiritual Qi The concentration has returned to normal levels. There are no obvious abnormal fluctuations in spiritual power within the three miles ahead, and there are not many space cracks. We can continue our journey normally."
Qin Tiexin took out the map Jade Slip that was found by several monks Storage Bag and gave it to him. Liu Suifeng compared it one by one and printed it on his own formation board.
Those maps were drawn in great detail, marking Pure Land Chan Sect's supply routes, patrol nodes and several material storage points.
"These monks are very lucky." Liu Suifeng muttered in a low voice while supplementing the map, "After Sky-Splitting Cliff, this area is where Pure Land Chan Sect was stationed back then. There are three supply points marked on the map, and further ahead is the main battlefield."
"Let's go." Lin Chuan glanced toward the northeast and took the lead.
The five of them maintained their formation.
Qin Tiexin is at the front, the Zen staff in his hand glowing with a deep dark golden luster under the dark red sky. Du Heng follows closely behind, with a broad sword across his side. Liu Suifeng is holding the array plate in the middle and continues to improve the map as he walks. Xu Ying was half a step behind Liu Suifeng, holding the Pill Furnace pendant in his hand. After Lin Chuan was broken, there were still a few small gaps on the blade of the long sword, but the wood attribute Spirit Rune on the sword had lit up again.
Not far ahead, large exploding craters and half-collapsed temporary camp sites began to appear on the dark red wasteland.
The broken foundation stone pillars were stuck diagonally in the rubble, and the Spirit Rune on the pillars had long been dimmed. Several thick bone spurs stuck diagonally on the ground were exposed from the sand, like some kind of Demon Beast ribs. Further on the horizon, the remains of several completely collapsed towers could be vaguely seen, eroded by thousands of years of wind and sand, only a few short walls remained.
Between heaven and earth, there is only the sound of gravel underfoot and the low whine of the distant wind as it passes through the cracks in the rocks.
The core area of the ancient battlefield has arrived.
Liu Suifeng held the array disk in his palm and kept swiping his fingers on the disk. The light cyan detection light spread in a circle every once in a while.
As he walked, he entered new terrain data into the array disk. When he encountered an abnormal point in spiritual power, he stopped and observed it for a moment, and then marked it after confirming it was safe.
Over the course of a few days, the formation disk had changed from a blank frame with just an outline to a complete map densely marked with the distribution of spiritual energy, the location of space cracks, and the direction of the terrain.
"According to this map, Pure Land Chan Sect spent a lot of money here."
Liu Suifeng said as he walked, the Spirit Rune on the array plate beating rapidly at his fingertips, "All the way from Sky-Splitting Cliff to the northeast, there is a supply point every twenty miles and a patrol node every fifty miles. One mile further from where we are now, it is the outermost material storage point back then."
Qin Tiexin walked in the front, listening to Liu Suifeng's words while sweeping the bottom of the ground with Spirit Material Sense.
He developed this habit when he was at the Flowing Cloud Sect. Once he went out to perform tasks, he would turn on Spirit Material Sense and cooperate with Divine Sense to explore. On the one hand, he could sense the approach of other monks holding Law Artifact, and on the other hand, he often found things that were ignored.
There are indeed many things buried underground in this ancient battlefield. Broken sword tips, broken shield fragments, and array disk fragments embedded in the soil are scattered all along the way. Unfortunately, most of Law Artifact's spiritual power has long been dissipated, leaving only scraps. Even if they are dug out, they can only be recycled as ordinary iron. The content of spiritual materials is pitifully low. Occasionally, a few places where the spiritual power fluctuations are slightly stronger are sensed, and they are either buried too deep or deviate too far from the route.
He told Liu Suifeng some of the more obvious possible locations, and Liu Suifeng marked them on the array board one by one without asking too many questions.
"Then mark it and come back if you have time on the return trip." Liu Suifeng said without raising his head, "The main reason is that it is too far away from the main road. If it deviates more than three miles from the route, it is not worth detouring. Looking at the marks on the map, we are still quite far from the seaside, and we may not be halfway there."
"Not halfway yet?" Du Heng frowned, "We've been gone for six days, right?"
"Yes." Liu Suifeng traced the array map with his finger, "From the entrance to Sky-Splitting Cliff, then to the main battlefield and Vast Waves Sea, based on the straight-line distance, we have walked about 40%, and there is still quite a long way to go."
Lin Chuan slowed down and looked back at the wasteland eroded by the wind and sand behind him.
"Don't take too many detours. As long as it's safe, the primary goal is to get sea water, and the secondary goal is to explore fortuitous opportunity. If you encounter places that are too far away, just mark them."
In the afternoon of the first day, the team passed the first supply point marked on the map.
It was a half-collapsed stone building. Most of the outer wall was destroyed by some force, and only one layer of the remaining part was exposed above the ground. Liu Suifeng scanned it with the array disk and shook his head at Lin Chuan.
"There is nothing. The remaining spiritual power has been completely dispersed. Without the protection of the magic circle, even if there is anything there, it will have decayed long ago."
The second supply point was in the early morning of the next day. This one was even worse. The entire camp was blown into a huge pit with a diameter of more than ten feet. There was dark red sand at the bottom of the pit, and not even a few fragments of the foundation stone were left.
Du Heng squatted at the edge of the pit and looked at the radial cracks on the edge of the pit. "To be able to blow up a pit of this size is at least Golden Core Late Stage's Law Technique attack. It may have been taken away by the enemy during that period."
The third supply point is closer to the garrison, and its scale is much larger than the first two. Sanskrit inscriptions can still be seen on the remaining stone walls, and several half-collapsed tunnels extend under the base of the walls.
Qin Tiexin used Spirit Material Sense to scan it, and there were a few faint metal spiritual energy fluctuations three feet underground, but the fluctuations were very light and they were buried under thick rock formations.
Liu Suifeng walked half a circle around the remaining wall, squatted down and pointed to a groove in the base of the wall. "There was originally a formation base Spirit Stone embedded here, but it was pried away by later people. Looking at the edges of the pry marks, they are not traces from a thousand years ago, but at most several decades. Someone has been here before."